Due, who has written books like My Soul to Keep and The Living Blood, has taught a class on Afrofuturism at UCLA for years. This fall Due has something else up her sleeves. On September 28th she will start teaching a course called “The Sunken Place: Racism, Survival, and Black Horror Aesthetic,” a class about the history of black people in horror films.

It was a class, Due — and the title — says, was inspired by Get Out:

“But the idea for the course, specifically, came because Jordan Peele dropped Get Out when I was teaching my Afrofuturism course last spring at UCLA. And it was one of those things where the timing wasn’t quite right and I thought, “Oh, I wish I used that in the course…”

I’ve taught the Afrofuturism course, I think, about four times. And I thought, “You know…horror, to me, is a subset of Afrofuturism, in that fantasy is a subset of Afrofuturism.” So, I decided, instead of doing the broader course, why not just break open black horror? Because Get Out is not the first black-made horror film, but it’s definitely the most successful. And I think it definitely has the ability to be culture-changing, let’s say.”

Due says that upon the release of the new movie, she saw a tangible difference when it comes to pitching to Hollywood. Prior to Get Out, there was no reference point of what a horror movie centered on black people looked like, In fact, Due says that for years their biggest reference point was the 1998 movie Beloved:

“That was the only reference point a lot of these executives had for what black horror would look like…Jonathan Demme did the film and—you know, of course I have the greatest admiration for Toni Morrison and that’s a Nobel-Prize winning novel—but the film did not do that great at the box office. So, it was always an awkward comparison in a pitch scenario. Just this year, just recently, we were talking to some network execs about a pilot we were developing…and they were like, “Oh, like in Get Out. You can do — blahbiddyblahbiddyblah…” And it’s not that it’s anything similar to Get Out, it’s just that was now the new framework. That’s what black horror looks like: Get Out.”

The entire interview is fascinating. Due goes on to talk about some of the material she wants to use at UCLA, from Birth of a Nation to White Zombie to Blacula to Tales from the Hood.